Is EDGE Magasine

[Reasonable]

rocketpig said:

It's still quite a difference but it's coming into perspective. The difference lies in a few PS3 games that Edge seemed to really, really hate. When you're dealing with less than 20 games, that can make a huge difference.

To me, the most surprising thing on that list is the Resistance games and Killzone. While I agree that they're rather unimpressive compared to some other shooters, when compared to the stupid-high score given to Halo 3 and the good score for ODST (meh, quite a mediocre game by Bungie standards), you'd think they would have fared a little better. That part makes no sense and I'd like to see who wrote each review.

On the other hand, Edge only gave Gears an 80. I don't think this is really a bias but maybe one or two reviewers are far more harsh on game ratings than their colleagues. When Gears gets an 80 from the same magazine that gives ODST a 90, it has to boil down to individual reviewers. I don't know of a single person who would agree with those scores when compared to one another.

I think you're close to the heart of it here.

Looking over the EDGE examples given, plus others, all I can see is that they have fairly consistently scored PS3 exclusive FPS lower than 360 titles.

In all other cases they seem to be fairly consistent by genre and in line with what seem to be likes/dislikes of the general staff there.  They've hammered plenty of PS3/360 titles so there is clearly no simple bias at console level.

My conclusion, they really like the FPS style of Halo/CoD and have simply disliked (by comparison) the rather different FPS styles of the main PS3 titles such as Resistance and KZ2.  I can imagine if you genuinely like Halo and see it as the benchmark for controls, online, etc. you're going to find KZ2 weaker by comparison (graphics aside obviously).

I don't think this shows a true, consistent bias so much as an unconcious bias to what they like in this area.  As you say this is almost sure to be down to individual reviewers.

In other cases, such as Heavy Rain, I expect a spread of scores.  The title is too different and niche (by comparison to today's core genre staples) to ever get a consistent set of reviews and opinions.  I loved the demo but wasn't sold on the controls, for example, beacuse I hate QTE approaches.  I know this would probably bias me to downscore Heavy Rain no matter how much I love what they're trying to do and the tone, graphics, etc.  I doubt I'm alone on this and so the title will see some lower scores, maybe even some crushingly low scores from reviewers who think it's whole approach is a threat to what they see as proper videogames.

I therefore don't see EDGE as truly biased nor feel the evidence shows that either.  They do like 360 based FPS title standards vs PS3 exclusives, but that isn't a real bias but a preference (one that they should though have tried to keep out of the reviews a little better or their editor should have questioned a little, but hey, it's nothing huge).